Pekapeka, Secret Forest Bat

Book Author and Illustrator Katie Furze & Ned Barraud
Rights Available World, excl. NZ, Australia

When velvety dark descends, the whole colony wakes and the hollow comes alive with twitching and chittering.

Bats are Aotearoa New Zealand’s only native land mammals. This book is set in an ancient forest, and follows Pekapeka, a short-tailed bat, on her nocturnal adventures as she forages for food, evades predators, and plays a crucial role in pollinating native plants, all while navigating the many dangers hidden in the night.

• A companion to Ruru: Night Hunter and Tuatara: A Living Treasure, this book brings the secretive world of pekapeka to life with a mix of lyrical narrative and fascinating facts.
• Rich, detailed illustrations by Ned Barraud vividly capture the beauty of Aotearoa’s native forests and the hidden life of its tiny bats.
• Pekapeka is a perfect resource for home, classroom and library, as well as a wonderful gift for nature lovers.

About the Author

Katie Furze writes children’s fiction and non-fiction, including picture books, short stories, articles, plays, readers and novels. This is her third non-fiction picture book with Scholastic, following on from Tuatara, a Living Treasure (a finalist in the Non-Fiction category of the NZ Children’s Book Awards) and Ruru, Night Hunter.
Katie has a master’s degree in creative writing and is fascinated by science and nature. When she’s not reading or writing, she enjoys the outdoors, tramping, yoga, travelling and scuba diving. She lives in Auckland with her family.

About the Illustrator

Ned Barraud studied art in the South Island of New Zealand and illustration at Wellington’s Victoria University and has since authored and illustrated a number of children’s books and journals including the ‘Explore and Discover’ series about different ecosystems in New Zealand.

Ned loves to help introduce children to the natural world around them and encourages them to explore it. He has illustrated Katie Furze’s Tuatara and Ruru, with Pekapeka being the 3rd in the series.

Ned lives in lives in Nelson, with his wife and three children.